PBS Re-Airs Wasserstein's Uncommon Women and Others, April 22

The PBS presentation of Wendy Wasserstein's "Uncommon Women and Others"--featuring a starry cast that includes Meryl Streep--will be re-aired on WNET/Channel 13 on April 22nd at 10:50 PM.

The program first aired as part of PBS' "Great Performances" in 1978. The late Wasserstein adapted it from her play, which she wrote as her thesis project at Yale and which first gained her acclaim as a playwright. Alma Cuervo, Jill Eikenberry, Cynthia Herman, Swoosie Kurtz, Anna Levine, Ann McDonough, Ellen Parker, Josephine Nichols and Streep are featured in the cast of the PBS presentation.

The show takes a look at "five old friends meeting for lunch seven years after graduation from a prestigious women's college. One is a successful corporate lawyer, another a housewife and mother. Also on hand: a perennial student, an insurance seminar hostess and a brash would-be writer. The reunion sets the scene for a series of flashbacks to their senior year when they were part of the 'uncommon' group who were going to be pretty amazing by the time they were 30," according to press notes.

Wasserstein died of complications from lymphoma on January 30th at the age of 55. She won much acclaim over the course of almost three decades for writing plays that with wit, warmth and insight, confronted a range of feminist issues--the conflict of career versus marriage and motherhood, the struggle for women to achieve equality at work, and the joys and tribulations of love and sex, among them. Her other plays included The Sisters Rosensweig, Isn't It Romantic, An American Daughter and The Heidi Chronicles, which is commonly regarded as her masterpiece and won both a Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Third, a critical and commercial hit at Lincoln Center, was the last new Wasserstein work to be presented. With the late composer Cy Coleman and lyricist David Zippel, Wasserstein also wrote the book for Pamela's First Musical (based on her own children's book). The author of several volumes of essays (including Bachelor Girls, Shiksa Goddess, and Sloth), Wasserstein also penned a debut novel called Elements of Style that will be published in May.

On March 13th, Lincoln Center will host a Wasserstein "remembrance" at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre.

Visit www.thirteen.org for more on "Uncommon Women and Others" or www.lincolncenter.org for the tribute evening at Lincoln Center.

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